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The Rise and Fall of Iran's Ahmadinejad
(Washington Post) Karim Sadjadpour - Given the youthful Iranian public's desire for change, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, seemed to have lost the war of ideas within the country by the early 2000s. Yet his saving grace was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose pious populism resonated among Iran's working classes, and his revolutionary zeal and willingness to attack Khamenei's adversaries endeared him to the supreme leader, whose backing of Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election proved decisive. What Khamenei failed to realize was that Ahmadinejad and his cohorts had greater ambitions. In "private" meetings - which were bugged by intelligence forces loyal to Khamenei - Ahmadinejad's closest adviser, Rahim Mashaei, spoke openly of designs to supplant the clergy. Then Ahmadinejad tried to take over the Ministry of Intelligence, whose vast files on the financial and moral corruption of Iran's political elite are powerful tools of political persuasion and blackmail. The supreme leader was publicly nonchalant about Ahmadinejad's insubordination; privately, however, he unleashed the jackals. The Revolutionary Guards - who helped engineer Ahmadinejad's contested 2009 reelection - swiftly declared their devotion to Khamenei, and several of the president's advisers were arrested. By accentuating the country's internal rifts and breaking previously sacred taboos - such as challenging the supreme leader - Ahmadinejad has become an unlikely, unwitting ally of Iran's democracy movement. He is likely to be remembered by historians as the man who hastened the Islamic Republic's decay. The writer is an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.